My Oops. I Forgot to Mention the "Sell Anything" Book

I promised those on my email list that I would post briefly about Harry Browne's How to Sell Anything book. Don't miss this....

The late Harry Browne was a leading Libertarian. I don't care what your political views are -- forget his. He had something else to offer so valuable that you're kind of a fool if you don't want to know it. (IMHO.)

He was a consummate salesman, and face to face sales are just a subset of marketing, but a crucial one to at least understand when you write sales copy. Just 'cause you can't see your prospect doesn't mean they aren't a thinking, breathing, feeling person. They are. Any guru will tell you that sales copy needs to be conversational and personable -- that a new friend will believe you easier than a skeptic-stranger.

Browne's book takes that a step further, and it is cheap to buy! This great book (140+ pages) covers a "great truth" in the first six chapters: that there is a single, great, common motivator for every person who parts with their money. Once you understand that (and he is absolutely spot-on in his assessment), the rest of effective selling-marketing suddenly makes total sense, and doesn't seem near so complex any more.

The book costs $9.75 for a download, and is a must-have. There is no affiliate program for this, so here is the direct URL for the book:

http://www.harrybrowne.org

Once on his home page (administered by his widow, apparently), just navigate past all the Libertarian stuff (if you want) and click your way to the book. It's the best $9.75 I've spent in years.

--Arlen

How to Instantly Save 10-50% on Marketing Resources.

Hi, Gentle Reader.

I just want to mention something. The Gurus will hate me for this, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Many sellers of marketing info use a technique called the "downsell." It can be a way for you to save 10-50% on the price of a resource you've chosen to buy. Often a sales page, whether for an originally searched-for product, or on an upsell after you purchase or opt in to a vendor's list, will include some form of exit pop-up to try to catch those who are leaving a page without buying.

This pop-up can be a full page, a mini-page, or it may even look like a live chat window, but they all do the same thing: they re-offer the product to you at a discount, sometimes with a bonus or two removed, sometimes not. The point is, though, the vendor will take less money, if that's what it takes to get any money.

I vote "less"!

Here's what you need to do to access a downsell discount if the vendor offers one. When you're on the sales page, open another tab or window in your browser, then paste the URL from the sales page into the blank one and see if it will open as a duplicate page. (Some vendors use sophisticated scripts that "know" your are not on the sales page for the first time.)

If the new window is a duplicate, then try closing that new window to see if you get an exit pop-up. If so, you can buy at a discount something that you were already going to buy at full price. If not, you have to decide if the product is really something you want. BTW, one software package I tried this on went from $197 to $97, just because I was willing to do the above few steps to check for a "downsell" discount. Saving $100 for 30 seconds of work ain't bad.

I suggest the two-page technique especially because of "one-time offers." These offers are usually already discounted, but if you close the OTO offer page, it really will be gone forever. Testing for a downsell using the duplicate page still leaves you able to order through the original page if the duplicate doesn't have a discount exit pop. Just an FYI.

Enjoy, friends, and go save money.

--Arlen

Driving Web Traffic to Your Site - Best Methods

The biggest challenge in almost everyone's web-based business is driving "targeted" traffic to your site. I've seen a little of what works and gets good results, and what is either useless or low-yield. I'm sure you have, too.

As much respect as I have for the "Gurus", there is one little bit of info they don't have, and it has to do with how successful they already are. Many of them talk about SEO or Google as a pay-per-click marketing venue. "Get to #1 in the organic search," they say, or "With Google's Adwords you can have tons of targeted traffic in an afternoon!"

My experience has been quite different. While I have been blessed to be better off than most, financially, I am certainly not a gajillionaire. The gurus touting both aspects of Google pretty much are gajillionaires already. Here's the point: they neither have to worry about how to pay for PPC campaigns of Adwords, nor do they worry about how to make the bills while they steep themselves in SEO lore.

Most of the rest of us can't afford that much time off to fiddle with SEO or finding just the right keywords, no matter how long their "tail" is. Wanna know where most of my subscribers have come from?

So far, two main places: Ezine ads (solo ads for me) and "safelist" email marketing. While I am blogging and submitting articles to ezines, I have not seen any major traffic come from those activities yet. I have no doubt that I will -- it's just a matter of time. But so far, I've had to buy my opt-in friends attention via safelists and solo ads.

I'd be interested in knowing what other real-world methods you all have found. If you want to know which safelists and solo ad venues I like, as well as what I paid, go to my affordable marketing training site, and I'll tell all. (It is password protected, but joining is free, and you get very cool info for doing so, so don't be shy.)

Well. Even though I've been marketing for years offline, better and better with each passing year, I am upper-intermediate in knowledge and just lower-intermediate in success scored on the web. One thing is for certain, though: there's no real point in any of you having to go buy three competing version of each marketing widget to find out which works best. Just read my reviews, comparisons, and articles.

As a parting shot, I want to just pass along the two most important things in my marketing world this week.

1 - Overwhelm your prospective client/customer with value, and
2 - Find a way to stand out from the crowd!

Hasta the next time,

Arlen